
IN NATURAL HISTORY 7 
For protective coloration is by no means a one-sided matter or else 
many animals would go hungry, but while it helps some to elude their 
enemies it is also of service to predatory beasts in stealing upon their 
’ quarry. The dun color of many African antelopes is undoubtedly a pro- 
tection, but the dun color of the lion blends with that of the desert sand 
and enables him to steal unseen upon the protected antelope. There is, to 
add a word of warning, much reason to think that entirely too much im- 
portance has been ascribed to protective coloration and that it is by no 
means so effective as its more ardent advocates would have us believe, 
since it is to a great extent offset by keenness of sight, acuteness of 
smell and sharpness of hearing on the part of both the hunter and the 
hunted. 
Given a tendency among animals to vary, it is easy to see how pro- 
tective coloration might have been brought about by Natural Selection. 
Any animals that chanced to resemble their surroundings in color so as 
not to be readily seen on the sand, or among the leaves or grass as the 
case might be, would have a little better chance of being overlooked by 
hungry enemies than those that were conspicuous, the result being the 
killing off of the conspicuous animals and the gradual establishment of a 
race of animals protectively colored. 
In regard to these various questions of natural selection, survival of 
the fittest, and evolution of animals, it may be said that while we do not, 
and never can, actually know that these things have taken place as de- 
scribed, careful study of the facts renders it probable that such has been 
the case. One of the oft remarked characteristics of mankind is a de- 
sire to kncw the causes of things, and if man can not ascertain all the 
facts he will frame some theory to explain those that are available. 
If animals are affected by their surroundings, we would expect to 
find that those which dwell where the conditions vary least, have changed 
the least; we would also expect that the simplest animals, those that 
have the fewest parts to change, bear the strongest resemblances to those 
that lived in the earlier days of the world. And this is exactly what is 
shown by the study of the past, the differences between living and extinct 
animals bearing a direct relation to these two things. Among the highly 
organized mammals, not a living species is directly related to those of 
that early period of the earth’s history we call Eocene, while very few go 
back beyond the (geologically) recent period known as Pliocene. By the 
aid of fossils we are able to trace some, notably the horse, back through 
the various changes they have undergone; but when this is done the 
early species are found to be so different from their living descendants 

